The institution's President JosŽ Mar’a Gil-Robles and political group leaders will have to weigh carefully the priorityof respecting the judgement from the Union's highest legal body with the widespread belief within the Parliament that its members should be entirely responsible for organising their own activities.

Gil-Robles instructed the Parliament's senior legal advisers last week to examine the consequences of the judges' ruling that MEPs had acted illegally by holding only 11 meetings in Strasbourg last year despite the 1992 decision by EU leaders that there should be 12.

That advice is expected to be ready within the next seven days, allowing the conference of presidents to put a formal proposal for approval by MEPs at the institution's next plenary session in Strasbourg the following week.

Senior MEPs are expected to underline the need to respect the law and propose that an extra session be slotted in during 1998 to bring the total up to the requisite 12.

Nevertheless, they are likely to keep the number of Strasbourg sessions this year at 11, on the grounds that there is insufficient time to change the arrangements.

With feelings running high among members who believe that the Parliament's influence is diluted by the continual commuting between Brussels and Strasbourg, there is, however, no guarantee that such a proposal would be automatically supported.

Opposition may well be fuelled by the restrictions which the Court imposed on the now-accepted practice of holding additional mini-sessions in Brussels.

In their ruling, the judges stated that additional plenary part-sessions could not be scheduled "for any other place of work unless the Parliament holds the 12 ordinary plenary part-sessions in Strasbourg where it has its seat".

Dutch Socialist MEP and former Parliament President Piet Dankert said the single seat working party, a group of MEPs who believe the Parliament should meet in one place instead of shuttling around Europe, would consider the judgement at a meeting during this month's plenary session in Strasbourg. "There are still some ideas which merit consideration. We will see what happens," he said.

Another member said those who supported holding sessions in Brussels would question just how long individual sessions had to be.

"Is it five, four or three days? Perhaps to meet the requirement, one day could be enough. It does begin to bring into question the way the Parliament operates," he said.

Already, some MEPs have raised the possibility of trying to end Strasbourg meetings on Thursdays instead of Fridays.

Others have suggested that the session already set for the week straddling the end of March and early April 1998 could be counted as two, not one, to comply with the Court's ruling.

Although many MEPs reacted with dismay to the judgement, especially since it went directly against earlier advice from one of the Court's advocates-general, few have been prepared to comment formally on it.

The European People's Party (EPP) Group leader Wilfried Martens was noticeably silent, although in his earlier capacity as Belgian premier he twice prevented EU leaders from designating Strasbourg as the Parliament's formal headquarters.

However, UK Conservative member and EPP Vice-President James Provan denounced the judgement, claiming that it would merely saddle Union taxpayers with further unnecessary costs and insisting: "The only sensible course is for Parliament now to embark on a root-and-branch reform of its internal management."

Socialist Group leader Pauline Green pledged to respect the judgement, but added: "It is nonsensical to deal with parliamentary sessions in this way especially when the budget session, which used to take a full week, needs only two hours nowadays."

One of the few MEPs to speak up in support of the judgement was the Union for Europe Group, whose French Gaullist leader Jean-Claude Pasty welcomed the Court's confirmation that 12 Strasbourg sessions per year was an obligation, not an option, for the Parliament.